


Peace of Mind

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Blair finds out about sentinels
Relationships: Blair Sandburg/Other(s)
Kudos: 9





	Peace of Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'solitary'

Peace of Mind

by Bluewolf

Although he presented a cheerfully outgoing personality to the world, Blair was actually more introverted than even Naomi realized. He could spend days socializing with others, but eventually he had to have a few hours on his own to unwind from the pressure of what he came to realize was other people's emotions; for somehow, he didn't know how, he was aware of those.

He was aware when people were upset about something, or frustrated, or angry... or even just bored. And there was nothing he could do to prevent that awareness.

Life became a little easier when he went to Rainier. At sixteen he was too young for the other students in his class to want to socialize with him in the evenings or weekends when there were no classes, and he knew it; his evenings and weekends were spend sitting quietly in a corner of the common room or - better - beside his bed in the dormitory, reading either his class books or other books on the subjects he was taking that he had obtained from the library. And he was aware of a kind of approval from the other students that he didn't try to join them, but accepted that they didn't want someone so young trying to tag along.

Sometimes on a Saturday Blair would hire a bike and go for a lengthy trip into the edges of Cascade Forest, or along the road that ran along the edge of Puget Sound. The solitude there was balm to his occasionally overwhelmed senses; especially after he found a small and rarely used parking lot overlooking the water.

He could sit there relaxing, absorbing the peace...

He saved as much as he could from the allowance Naomi gave him, and eventually bought a cheap car. That allowed him to go a little further afield, and he soon discovered several more surprisingly quiet parking lots from which he could indulge in solitary hikes. He rarely went more than a total of five miles, always leaving in the car a note of where he was going; aware that walking alone in Cascade Forest wasn't the safest of pursuits. But he never had any problems, and always returned to Rainier in a relaxed frame of mind.

Eventually he was old enough to go on some of the expeditions the University sponsored every year. He enjoyed these, although sometimes found one quite stressful because of the attitude of some of the other students. Several of them seemed to feel that these expeditions were a waste of time; that when they graduated and went looking for a job, they would be looking for a position in a museum - a nice sedentary sit-at-a-desk job. That attitude bothered Blair, who felt that if these students considered expeditions a waste of time they shouldn't be bothering going on them. Participation wasn't mandatory, the range of cultures covered by anthropology being as wide as it was; someone most interested in the culture of the Lapland Sami would find little of relevance in spending time visiting the Makah, Skagit or Yakama tribes, and the Rainier authorities accepted that.

***

Time passed. Blair got his Bachelors and Master's degrees, and decided to stay on at Rainier (unlike many of his fellow students who couldn't shake the dust of learning off their feet fast enough). He wanted to get a PhD. What he would do after he got it he wasn't quite sure; Indeed, he wasn't totally sure that continuing at Rainier wasn't just delaying the day when he had to get a job... but then Dr. Stoddard offered him a position as his teaching assistant.

When, a year later, Stoddard resigned, planning to devote his life to studying the handful of 'still living in the Stone Age' tribes that were left, Blair decided to leave as well and join the army, to take advantage of the army student loan repayment system. Not that he had borrowed much during his years at Rainier, but a three year stint in the army would let him clear that debt, and give him some skills that might come in useful any time he might go on an expedition - for he had every intention of returning to Rainier to get a PhD and thereafter pursuing an anthropological career.

He actually ended up in the air force, working with helicopters; a job that suited his preference for minimal company perfectly.

It was during the months he spent in Saudi Arabia that Blair met a man with five heightened senses. Jamil was rarely seen out of the company of his brother Shukri, but one day Blair saw him on his own and noticed that he seemed to have frozen, staring out over the desert. Blair spoke to him, and received no answer. It was almost as if Jamil was unconscious... And then Blair remembered seeing Shukri rubbing Jamil's arm one day, speaking to him, although Jamil seemed to be totally unaware of his brother for a minute or two before responding. So he took a step closer, began rubbing Jamil's arm in the way he remembered Shukri doing, while in his not-quite-perfect Arabic he murmured, over and over, "Jamil, where are you? You can't just stand there looking at nothing."

It took two or three minutes, but then Jamil seemed to become aware of Blair's voice. "What... Blair? Oh, no... "

"What happened?" Blair asked. "Is that something that happens often?"

Jamil hesitated for some seconds. "It happens sometimes, if I'm not careful. Usually Shukri is with me, and when he is there isn't often a problem. But today - he wasn't feeling well, so he stayed in bed. And I started concentrating too hard on something I saw... " He hesitated again. "We tend to keep it to ourselves - we grew up in a small village, where my... my abilities were seen as given to me by shaitan. It was easier not to let them show. Can I ask you to say nothing about them?"

"Of course, but what abilities are they?"

"I can see and hear further that most people - and I can taste the slightest addition to food, smell what the women are cooking... "

Slowly, Blair nodded. He knew how much of a range there could be in what people could see and hear.. and for one person to be top of the range in all his senses... he could understand how badly a superstitious small village population might react. "You have my word," he said.

"Shukri can help me control my senses although nobody else seemed able to," Jamil added, "but from the help you gave me just now, it seems that you have the same ability that he does. When this war is over, you will be returning to your own land? Perhaps one day you will meet someone there with the same abilities that I have, and be able to help him."

***

When he resumed his life at Rainier, working towards his PhD - he had found Burton's The Sentinels of Paraguay in a book shop in Tunis on his way home at the end of his tour of duty, and was basing his dissertation on that, as well as his experience with Jamil (whose name he had changed to the unidentifying John) - and once again working as a TA, many of his weekends were spend on solitary hiking trips into Cascade Forest.

And then a nurse at the hospital, an ex-student who knew of his interest in the subject, faxed him details of a Cascade detective who was complaining about noises being too loud, lights too bright... and realized that he had found his Jamil.

Suddenly he discovered that he no longer needed the crutch of those solitary weekends. Although Jim was sometimes hard to live with, basically the company of his sentinel gave Blair the peace of mind that solitude had once given him. And getting that peace of mind was worth putting up with Jim's sometimes bad temper... and constant over-protectiveness.

But unfortunately, despite Jamil's words about his village's reaction to his abilities, and his promise to Jamil which led him to identify the Arab as 'John' throughout, Blair forgot to take the same precautions with Jim's identity while he was writing his dissertation. Granted, calling him 'Jim' in the document was hardly a betrayal, but too many people knew he was riding with Jim Ellison; in hindsight he realized he should have called his sentinel something like 'Tony'… though even with that, if he was writing about the abilities of a cop, people would still have guessed that 'Tony' was actually Jim Ellison.

To protect Jim, Blair was forced to claim fraud, and three days later, leaving a note apologizing for his stupidity, he left Cascade and joined Naomi in her wandering around the world - knowing that even the solitary nature of that wandering would not, could never, compensate for what he had lost.

Until the day, some three weeks later, there was a knock on the door of his hotel room… and he opened it to find Jim smiling at him.

"How do you feel about going to live with the Chopek, Chief?"

***

It was an inspired move. Jim resumed his position as tribal sentinel, Blair was accepted as Jim's partner and a shaman, and Blair had as much solitude as he wanted.


End file.
